What Victoria Woodhull and Donald Trump Have in Common

Just as we see the Republicans trying to distance themselves from successful businessman, self-proclaimed Presidential candidate Donald Trump; suffragists, including Susan B. Anthony, tried to distance themselves from successful businesswoman self-proclaimed Presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull. Victoria’s views on love and sex were threatening to the establishment. A front-page editorial in the Evening Star, a Washington D.C. newspaper, stated, “..if the champions of the cause of female elevation and female suffrage hope to gain any converts from the outside world, we can tell them that the sooner they cast off such offensive and disreputable blatherskites as the Woodhulls, and Claflins, and Trains, and others of that ilk, the better for their undertaking.” Reformer Susan B. Anthony worried that she herself would lose control of the women’s movement. Anthony even refused to illegally cast a vote for Victoria, instead illegally casting a vote to re-elect President Ulysses S. Grant. Both women spent election night in jail. It would be another fifty years before women had the right to vote.